Southbury expanding opioid programs for seniors

SOUTHBURY — Health officials hope to expand existing programs tackling the opioid crisis to reach the senior population, which can often be especially vulnerable to substance abuse.

The Pomperaug District Department of Health, which covers Southbury, Woodbury and Oxford, will use a $23,000 grant from the Connecticut Community Foundation to run programs for older adults who use prescription pain medications.

An AARP report estimates that 2.7 million Americans over 50 abused painkillers in 2015. The report also said the number of those over 65 hospitalized for opioid abuse has quintupled in the last two decades.

It is difficult to say how the national statistics translate locally, said Neal Lustig, Pomperaug’s health director, but the concern is great enough that the department decided to explore how it could help.

“There are issues in those communities,” Lustig said. “The data does not indicate that they’re overdosing and dying from it like people in their 20s, 30s and 40s might be, but it’s out there and we thought we might be able to address that.”

He added that Emergency Response Coordinator Robin Lucas took the lead in both getting the grant and setting up the program.

The new program, called Senior Health Opiate Awareness and Response (SHOAR), will add senior-specific presentations to existing opioid prevention initiatives and new Chronic Pain Self-Management Programs for senior communities in the three towns.

Lustig said the pain management classes, aimed at helping those with chronic pain take charge of maintaining their health, will be the first of their kind in the state.

“This is really innovative stuff,” he said. “The evidence-based pain management is just coming into Connecticut so we’ve become kind of the genesis for it.”

Staff members will be trained in April or May to run the programs, which Lustig said will likely run six times over the year.

The classes will be added to other evidence-based programs for seniors — such as fall prevention, diabetes and chronic illness — that the district has been offering for about five years.

General opioid prevention efforts in the area were ramped up more recently, after the department learned that Oxford had the highest opioid death rate in the state in 2016, Lustig said. Seven residents died of overdoses that year, a high number relative to the town’s population.

“People were shocked and (saying), ‘How is this happening? This is not supposed to be happening here,’” Lustig said. “But it is happening, so we’re working with the towns to get some measures in place.”

The district created a prevention and response presentation that it has been using since July, including training in the use of naloxone, the medication used to reverse an opiate overdose, Lustig said.

Loryn Ray, director of senior services in Woodbury, said the senior center there would be happy to run the new programs, specifically in pain management.

It’s difficult to know whether seniors in town struggle with opioid abuse, she said, but overall management of medication has been a concern.

She said caretakers and family members of seniors often worry about the amount or mixing of medications and what to do if a mistake is made. And though seniors themselves aren’t usually open about struggling with managing their own medication, Ray said, she suspects the concern is still there.

“The nature of pain management is that the pain is present, so we need to try to keep people as comfortable as possible,” Ray said. “Walking that line can be difficult.”